MSC Poesia Cruise Review by Biscuitsmum: Treated Cruisers as Cargo

MSC Poesia

Overall Member Rating

Treated Cruisers as Cargo

Sail Date:
October 2011
Destination:
Canada & New England
Embarkation:
New York (Manhattan)

The MSC Poesia is a beautiful ship with well appointed high end decor. It is fastidiously clean. Some of the crew members ( the cabin crew, the dining room waiters and some of the servers in the lounges were pleasant and put their hearts and skills into their jobs, but the majority did not.
I will never cruise with them again and hope that this review will keep others from making the same mistake.
MSC's management focuses on what is best for their business and their employees. They have no respect for the cruisers. We felt like we were treated like cargo. Some of the examples are as follows.
We booked a 14 day cruise to Canada and New England. In reality it was two seven day cruises as, aside from the ports of call, meals and entertainment were duplicated.
The entertainment was low budget and lacked diversification. They had a staff of dancers and singers which they used each night. They also had a juggler, a magician and an acrobatic act. Week 2 did not even have More
the juggler nor the arobic act. Boring and cheap! And... the cruise director was nothing more than a translator. She opened each show with a welcome message in about 5 or 6 languages. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? She was aloof and lacked any interpersonal skills. She had no clue as to what a cruise director can do for an audience. She was merely a figurehead.
The lounge entertainers were talented. We did enjoy them.
The cafeteria was open until 10:00AM for breakfast in the morning. If you got there at 10:01, they closed the partitions right in front of you and then began mopping the floors while you were still eating. On the 8th day, they closed the cafeteria at 9:15 without sufficient notice to anyone. There were hundreds of us trying to get at least cereal, but they did nothing. We were just out of luck. Getting coffee, tea or icewater was supposed to be a 24 hour item, but you were hard pressed to find a coffee spicket that had coffee in it. There were many crew members in the cafeteria but most were busy talking to one another in some other language. If you needed them, you had to interupt them. They obviously never been told by management that their job was to serve the cruisers. Without us, they would not have a job!
When we got to ports, they would tell us to meet in a certain lounge at a specific time. The tours never left on time. We would have to sit around and then when they were ready they would walk us up and down stairs through halls; many of the people were exhausted. The meeting place never corresponded with the disembarkation deck. If it was in the middle on deck 5, why did we meet at the other end on Deck 7? This happened every time. Then they would have us walk off the ship on a long gang plank that was steep and difficult to navigate, especially when wet. People in wheel chairs and with canes had to use the same plank. It was extremely dangerous.
In our last port, Newport,RI, we were due to disembark at 12:30.( Why not 8:00 or 9:00 AM?) They couldn't anchor well and consequently we were not able to get off the ship until 3:00 PM. We had to wait for the tenders to go back and forth so we were 2 hours late for our tour and had no time to stay and shop or walk the town. I heard from a reliable source that it happens there all the time and they have been advised by many people to remove the port stop and stay an extra day somewhere else. All they did was aggravate everyone. And, again, they made no changes to the cafeteria schedule, so when lunch came and went we were all in lounges waiting to go ashore. When we returned, they were already closed. They said they would open again at 6:30. They could have at least left out some sandwiches or fruit. There was no thought to our needs, just their schedule.
The tender drivers were "hot dogs". They banged into the piers and had no idea how to tie up the tender to the pier. At two ports we had conversations with the town tour guides who said that it happens all the time and that the other cruise ships want nothing to do with them. When it is reported to the MSC management, they relied with, "we speak italian". They will not discuss it with them. They are an accident waiting to happen,
On my last morning I was told to be in the lounge at 9:00am. My other 6 friends and family that I was travelling with were getting off at 7:30 am. They would not let me change my color to exit with them, nor vice versa. I and my 96 year old Mother sat at the appointed spot until 11:00am before they allowed us to disembark. There was no communication as to why they were not letting us out. Finally at about 10:30, after we had been waiting for an hour annd one half, they sent a crew member out. He was a real jerk. No one in authority was evidently brave enough to face all of us. He laughed and joked about who he would call next. People were angry enough without sending this jerk out. He had no respect for what we were going through. I have never heard or seen such angry people. Cattle, that's what it felt like.
The bathrooms were not marked well and were very far apart. Many times the closest bathroom was up or down a floor.
I will never travel with them again and would like to warn anyone against it. They do not know nor want to "serve" people. They see us as things that need to be moved, just like cargo. Less

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Cabin review: 5

We were in an ocean view with an obstructed view. We took it because it gave us more space than an inside or balcony room, but was not as expensive as a balcony room. It allowed light into the room, but all you see is an orange lifeboat out the window. If you stand on the bed and look over the life boat, you can see the sky.